An extended Xbox outage beginning 26 July 2026 prevented players from launching disc-based games even when playing offline, contradicting Microsoft's offline-play guarantees and prompting the company to acknowledge and address the issue. The incident highlighted dependencies on online verification despite disc ownership.
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An extended Xbox outage that began Sunday evening hasn't just caused issues for people trying to play digital games - it blocked people from playing their disc-based games, too. Xbox's status page initially reported the outage on Sunday at about 11PM ET, and it has also prevented people from logging in, launching apps, or finding […]
After the recent Xbox outage even blocked people from playing offline disc-based console games, Microsoft is trying to soothe concerns that you don't truly own anything under Xbox's license system. In a statement to The Verge, Xbox technology chief Scott Van Vliet says that while physical game discs are subject to licensing inspections, that shouldn't […]